Escapist Expo 2013 is just around the corner, and will be taking place October 4, 5, and 6 right here in Durham, North Carolina. With Expo looming, it's time to start planning your weekend. To that end, we've got some special guest highlights and their panel schedules for you. It's not too late to register if you're not too far away. Get your pass, come on out, and plan to check out some of these special guests at their panel appearances.

John "TotalBiscuit" Bain - Gaming Video Producer

Known by aliases such as The Murloc, TotalHalibut, TotalBiscuit (TB) and the Cynical Brit, John Bain is an incredibly opinionated media producer from the United Kingdom. In the spring of 2010, John began producing various gaming videos for his YouTube channel. The TotalHalibut Channel is one of the most successful gaming channels on YouTube with a fanbase of more than 1.2 million subscribers.

The five guys that make up The Warp Zone started making videos together in college at Santa Clara University, where they discovered a love of sketch comedy with an onČcampus club called BroncoTV. The Warp Zone found considerable success with their music videos; their HaloČthemed parody of The Wanted's hit, "Glad You Came," continues to be their most consistently viewed video. The Warp Zone plans to continue on their quest to be the most successful nerd comedy/music video channel on Youtube.

Steve Segedy is a game publisher, a web developer, and a dad to two great boys. He is the man behind the curtain at Bully Pulpit Games, handling the day-to-day operations as well as production, editing, and occasionally a bit of writing for award-winning games like Fiasco, Grey Ranks, and the Shab-al-Hiri Roach. He is also the lead organizer for Games on Demand, an all-volunteer organization that puts on gaming events at Gen Con, Origins, PAX, and other regional conventions.

S. Gregory Boyd is a partner and the chairman of the Interactive Entertainment Group at Frankfurt Kurnit, where he represents a wide variety of interactive entertainment and new media clients. Mr. Boyd has extensive experience negotiating and drafting game development agreements for consoles, PC's, mobile games, social games, online games, and MMO's.

Fappy:TotalBiscuit is coming? Damn, sucks Susan isn't around anymore. I'd love to see them get into a huge debate at the Expo. They don't seem to get a long XD

Ah yes, I remember that thread... =P

But good to see even more great gaming speakers at the Expo. Fantastic job by the Expo organisers, it seems. Hope to see as much of the content on the site as possible and I'm becoming more and more jealous of all those able to attend.

Fappy:TotalBiscuit is coming? Damn, sucks Susan isn't around anymore. I'd love to see them get into a huge debate at the Expo. They don't seem to get a long XD

Yeah, but then again my dream panel could become a reality. Imagine if Yahtzee, Jim Sterling and TotalBiscuit all sat for a panel. I believe the cynicism would be dense enough to create a singularity that would pull in all other cynicism from a very large radius. A cynical event horizon of a sort. It would be glorious.

Fappy:TotalBiscuit is coming? Damn, sucks Susan isn't around anymore. I'd love to see them get into a huge debate at the Expo. They don't seem to get a long XD

Yeah, but then again my dream panel could become a reality. Imagine if Yahtzee, Jim Sterling and TotalBiscuit all sat for a panel. I believe the cynicism would be dense enough to create a singularity that would pull in all other cynicism from a very large radius. A cynical event horizon of a sort. It would be glorious.

Quiotu:[quote="Fappy" post="7.829405.20203853"]Imagine if Yahtzee, Jim Sterling and TotalBiscuit all sat for a panel. I believe the cynicism would be dense enough to create a singularity that would pull in all other cynicism from a very large radius. A cynical event horizon of a sort. It would be glorious.

Fappy:TotalBiscuit is coming? Damn, sucks Susan isn't around anymore. I'd love to see them get into a huge debate at the Expo. They don't seem to get a long XD

My entire exchange with the man was, I believe, all of two comments in a forum thread. Hardly a rivalry of epic proportions.

I've thought long and hard about that fateful exchange, and in my mind it has become clear to me that it was just a simple misunderstood joke, failing to connect across the vastness of the internet gulf.

I can only say that this epiphany changed me as a man, and as a human being, in ways that I could never imagine...and I hope for the positive.

I now strive to make the world a better place, from my base of operations, located deep within my Mom's basement. I hope my example serves as inspiration to all who would ever post on a forum, or comment on a video, or tweet the most idiotic dreck imaginable.

P.S. Thinking about this every day for months was not weird at all. Honest. My Mom told me.

P.P.S. I hope TotalBiscuit enjoys his flight-free journey to the Expo. It may even put him in a good mood. Wait...is that a good thing or a bad thing??

Fappy:TotalBiscuit is coming? Damn, sucks Susan isn't around anymore. I'd love to see them get into a huge debate at the Expo. They don't seem to get a long XD

Going by what others have said on this thread, I think I must have missed a fairly epic exchange. Any links?

TB Tweeted 'Escapist users are nice' when someone made a thread about him then Susan called him a whiner or something similar. That's literally all it was. (The 'whining' was just him asking for feedback cos no one watched his PAX coverage).

Racecarlock:Presumably he'll spend ten minutes commenting on the graphics options of the table and then blandly explain the room with barely any jokes.

Well he is more of a PC-game critic, not all around gaming comedian, so it sorta falls under his general responsibilities to review graphics options and the "jokes" part is just something he occasionally does, not really his thing. Not every English-speaking game reviewer with an accent has to do the same thing as Yahtzee you know.

Racecarlock:Presumably he'll spend ten minutes commenting on the graphics options of the table and then blandly explain the room with barely any jokes.

Because every online personality has to sit there and entertain you with crude humor and any number of varying hyperbole of opinions for comedic effect and exaggeration.

EVERY

ONE OF THEM.

OT:Hope it's recorded. I'm not really a fan of TB's but his videos do give me a fairly solid preview of games that I may or may not get. His meshing with the Escapist people may end up fairly entertaining.

Quiotu:[quote="Fappy" post="7.829405.20203853"]Imagine if Yahtzee, Jim Sterling and TotalBiscuit all sat for a panel. I believe the cynicism would be dense enough to create a singularity that would pull in all other cynicism from a very large radius. A cynical event horizon of a sort. It would be glorious.

According to a tweet from Yahtzee... that's happening!

I don't really like his attitude and I can't STAND his weird Ringo Starr-esque voice, but tempered by two other people whom I do like, you can colour me interested.

Dead Century:Eh. Colour me unimpressed. Never did like TotalBiscuit or his attitude. Too much snark. Also, his PC elitism is fairly off-putting.

I like his snark, especially on live things like the TGS (now Co-Optional) Podcast. I'm fairly sure he's not quite the same in real life as his online persona also.

As a PC Gamer I appreciate his stance on many things regarding the PC. He rarely comes across as outright elitist, merely as an enthusiastic advocate of the platform, and his support for indie devs and their games. We need more people like him.

He's also spoken at length about consoles in some of his videos. Much of it is fairly positive.

I just wish I was in the US, and closer to the Expo.

It would be amazing to see TB, Jim Sterling and Yahtzee all at the same event :)

Dead Century:Eh. Colour me unimpressed. Never did like TotalBiscuit or his attitude. Too much snark. Also, his PC elitism is fairly off-putting.

He mostly covers PC games, I have yet to see him attack consoles or console gaming in any way. Ill considered comments like yours are what I find off-putting.

He is one of the smartest guys doing Youtube gaming content today.

He may not attack consoles directly, but he always (at least back when I used to watch him) always make comments that may not seem like insults to some people on the surface. He talks as if PC is the only thing that matters, and that consoles are inferior in every way. There is just something about his tone of voice, and the way how he can spend minutes on to the most frivolous topics in every video he makes that makes him just unlikable to me.

Also, I wouldn't call him all that smart. All he does is spout spec numbers and frame rates the entire video whenever he is talking about a specific game, and the rest of the time he talks like an entitled PC gamer. He may raise a good point every know and again, but he usually just complains how a game is not optimized for a pc port, or how every game in the history of ever isn't open world. Usually, whenever someone calls a commentator smart that is because they share a similar opinion to that commentator, and likes hearing their own opinion coming from someone else.

Despite how it seems I'm not "attacking" pc gamers. I am simply stating my distaste for Total Biscuit's attitude and how he does his videos. Also, that last sentence isn't there to insult you. It is simply an observation I have made from many other people.

I've included everything I can think of. I just want to say now that I have no intention of responding to anyone who reply's to this post. I just felt like getting my opinion on the matter out there. Recently, whenever I would reply to people on these forums it is a one way conversation. Simply put, everyone already has their minds made up on the matter. I've seen, when someone makes a valid point, the other person simply ignores that section or still talks like the other person is wrong.

Congrats to the TB fans that are happy to see him. I don'y like him(his attacks on used games and consoles. I believe his videos on lesser known games can hurt a games sales if its just a genre he doesn't like. Plus his fans act like his word is absolute law to the point where if they go "Totalbiscuit says..." Your argument is dead to me.)